Sir Harrison Birtwistle in Focus : Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall

Sir Harrison Birtwistle (Photo credit Simon Harsent)

At the Wigmore Hall, the Nash Ensemble Focus on Sir Harrison Birtwistle: or rather the "latest" focus, since the Nash and Birtwistle have had a fruitful relationship for years.  Indeed, four pieces on this programme were commissions from the Nash and Artitsic Director Amelia Freedman (who was also in the audience) : Birtwistle's Fantasia upon all the notes (2011), Elliott Carter's Mosaic (2004) and that perennnial favourite, Birtwistle's The Woman and the Hare (1999).  Highlights of the evening, however were two new pices, Birtwistle's Duet for Eight Strings, and Oliver Knussen's Study for 'Metamorphosis' for solo bassoon.

Birtwistle will turn 85 in July, but still looks sprightly, his dry humour undimmed.  His Duet for Eight Strings (2018-2019) shows that musically he's in top form, as inventive and thought-provoking as ever.  He described this Duet as "a string quartet for two players". He put his hands together, fingers intertwined, and moved them to show how the two focal points of the piece connect while remaining distinct.  More formally, the piece "alternates between passages of double-stopped chords in rhythmic unison (or near unison) in which the four strings oif the viola and the four of the cello form a single unit of eight strings, 'hocket' passages of rhythmically interlocking exchanges, in which the two/four string units combine to produce a contrasting kind of eight-string texture" (Anthony Burton's programme notes). Seated in the front row, two metres from Lawrence Power and Adrian Brendel, that sense of connectedness felt so strong it was as if I was being drawn into the performer's circle of energy : uncommonly intense.  Another of Birtwistle's intricate puzzles within puzzles, this one with the extra dimension of drawing the listener.  The piece evolves as a series of separate units, hockets as pauses which aren't really silent, but contribute to structure. The sections aren't variations so much as new ideas, imaginatively articulated, yet in typical Birtwistle style, aphoristic and elusive.   Such a sense of invisible connections ! My partner said, later, "If Knussen were here, he'd say 'let's do that again !". I thought, too, of Elliott Carter's sense of whimsy. Many happy memories at Aldeburgh and elsewhere.

Knussen's Study for 'Metamorphosis' for solo bassoon followed, with Ursula Leveaux. Originally written in 1972 and revised in 2018, it's Knussen in middle age looking back on early work.  Though it's a "study", it feels like a whole, unified piece.  It's also a good partner for Birtwistle's Duet, since the bassoon seems to be duetting itself, playfully, but with purpose.

Seven years ago, the Nash Ensemble premiered Birtwistle's Fantasia upon all the notes. Despite the title, this has little to do with Henry Purcell's Fantazia upon one note.  Birtwistle's Fantasia is another intricate puzzle. Initially, the  two violins (Benjamin Nabarro and Michael Gurevich) dominate, with fierce chords, followed by flute and clarinet (Philippa Davies and  Sarah Newbould) and viola and cello (Lawrence Power and Adrian Brendel), the harp (Lucy Wakeford)  serving as pivot and continuo.  Intricately poised playing - maybe the Purcell connection operates on a deeper level.  At times, the harp is beaten for percussive effect.  More harp-as-leader in Elliott Carter's Mosaic (2004) for harp, flute, oboe, clarinet (Richard Hosford, string trio and double bass (Tom Goodman). Again, patterns of cells multiplying and developing.

The Nash Ensemble were joined by Claire Booth for Birtwistle's Three Songs from the Holy Forest (2016-7). This has connections with Birtwistle's Moth Requiem (2013) a mysterious piece for chamber ensemble and small group of female voices which chant the Latin names of moths.  Like the Moth Requiem, these three songs soar, float, and suddenly dart in new directions: very much like the movement of a moth.  The texts here, to poems by Robin Blaser, are more extensive. The vocal line is more defined too, though it swoops and hovers in short phrases, Booth's voice plangent and almost abstract : singer as wind instrument.  An alto flute replicates and extends the vocal line : two "voices" enclosed in the ensemble, like the moth  Blaser envisaged, trapped inside a piano, its wings making the piano strings vibrate.  Birtwistle wrote his own poems for Songs by Myself (1984).  The haiku-like nature of the texts fit well with the enigmatic minimalism of the orchestration.  Booth's voice moves : at once languid and melancholy, beautifully captured by the sounds of the vibraphone (Richard Benjafield).

"If anything", Philip Langridge told me in 2008,"Birtwistle’s music has become more impressive with time. He writes mathematically, in the way Bach writes mathematically, but with great emotion. To sing Birtwistle, you have to understand the ‘maths’ first, to get the figures right, to get the intervals right".  So to Birtwistle's The Woman and the Hare, another Nash Ensemble classic, to poems by Stephen Harsent. The Woman and the Hare are ancient symbols. Whatever their meaning, they connect to mysteries : Moonlight, wildness, the subconscious. Typical Birtwistle territory. Here the singer's strange, curving lines are shadowed by a reciter (Simone Leona Hueber). Yet spoken words, intoned at a clipped pace suggesting tension, not meant to elucidate : they serve as counterpoint to the singer's keening, flowing lines and ethereal pitch.  Duality, again. The ensemble sussurates around them, silvery tones, rustlings, low rumbles, sounds that might evoke sudden frantic movement, even a sense of danger.   Something happens : we do not know, but we're hypnotised by the singer's  gravity-defying  legato. Is the hare consumed ? "Her flesh falls from the bone" says the reciter.   But when Booth sings, the hare has the last word. "Look with new eyes /everything in place/  lush landscape.... moonrise". Transformational. 

Poetry beyond words - Nash Ensemble Wigmore Hall

The Nash Ensemble's 50th Anniversary Celebrations at the Wigmore Hall were crowned by a recital that typifies the Nash's visionary mission.  Above, the dearly-loved founder, Amelia Freeman,  a quietly revolutionary figure in  her own way, who has immeasurably enriched the cultural life of this country. Ostensibly, the concert featured some of the best modern British composers, plus Elliott Carter, an honorary Brit, since his music has been so passionately championed in this country.  But a deeper perusal of the programme revealed even greater depths.. "Poetry beyond Words" I thought, since most of the pieces transformed their original sources in text and visual images into exquisitely original works of art. Lieder ohne Worte: an affirmation of the life force that is creativity.

Simon Holt's Shadow Realm  (1983) gets its title from a poem by Magnus Enzensberger (a favourite of Hans Werner Henze).  ".....for a while/ i step out of my shadow/for a while.....".  Holt's music penetrates the elusive mysteries of the text, going beyond the words to express its spirit. It's structured in two halves, "shadowing" one another, but scored for an unusual combination of clarinet, harp and cello, creating a three-way conversation  creating a further shadow around the duality of its conception. It's a miniature, only eight minutes long, but its concision is so elegant that it puts to shame many works which drown in verbose meandering. Holt was only 25 when it was written: a remarkable original achievement by a composer whose self-effacing manner belies a mind of great originality. It says much about the Nash Ensemble that they commissioned it, long before Holt became famous.

The poems of Lorine Niedecker (1903-1970) pack intense meaning into fragmentary, haiku-like lines, some of which don't even follow grammatical syntax. But therein lies their beauty.(that's her in the photo). Harrison Birtwistle's Nine Settings of Lorine Niedecker (1998-2000), another Nash commission, distils each poem with a kind of almost homeopathic concentration, communicating the spirit of the poems, far more creatively  than mere word-painting.  Claire Booth sings arching lines which reach upwards and outwards, sustaining the legato, while the cello weaves around, without interruption, coming into its own only when the voice falls silent, like an elusive echo, Eventually, the poems seem to move away, beyond human hearing. The music gradually slows down, voice and cello retreating together with melancholy "footsteps", each note expressed with solemn dignity.  Birtwistle recognizes the fundamental structure of Niedecker's text, but emphasizing syllables and single words, rather than phrases. " thru bird/start, wing/drip, weed/drift", though in the text the words are joined. Perhaps this captures the sense of water, dripping quietly in some vast stillness. Yet it's also typically Birtwistlean puzzle-making,  creating patterns within patterns, layers within layers. Beautiful moments linger in the memory, like the "You, ah you, of mourning doves", where the poet plays with the word "you", which sounds like dove call yet also evokes human meaning, while the composer, for once, infuses the word "mourning" drawing its resonance out, like the cooing of the bird.

One of the great joys of Julian Anderson's music is that he's an extraordinarily visual composer. Graphic images inspire his music and enrich its interpretation. His Alhambra Fantasy (2000) was stimulated by Islamic architecture, The Book of Hours (2005) by the miniatures in  Trés riches heures du Duc de Berry, and even Symphony (2003), despite its non-committal title, owes much to the paintings of Sibelius's friend, Axel Gallen-Kallela. Yet again, the Nash Ensemble recognized his unique gift almost from the start.  Poetry Nearing Silence (1997) was inspired by  The Heart of a Humument, a book of paintings by Tom Phillips, where random words from an obscure novel were picked at random, then adventurously illustrated.  See more here.  Just as Phillips transforms words into visuals, Anderson transforms ideas into abstract music. Eight highly individual segments unfold over 12 minutes. Each has a title, borrowed from the book, though the settings as such aren't literal.  In the third segment "my future as the star in a film of my room", one of the violinists plays percussion (a ratchet), which whirrs like the cranking of an old-fashioned camera. In the Wigmore Hall, the sound is decidely disturbing, but that's perhaps Anderson's intention : we can't take what we hear for granted. In theory, the segments travel round Europe - Vienna, Bohemia, Carpathia, Paris. Far away landscapes of the imagination: perhaps we hear references to Janáček's Sinfonietta, crazily buoyant but cheerful. The Nash play at being folk musicians, imitating alphorns and shepherd's pipes.  Everything in joyous transformation!  Gradually, the clarinet (Richard Hosford) draws things together, as silence descends.  Although Anderson doesn't employ voice in this piece, it feels like song, because the instrumentation has such personality.

The recital began with the world premiere of  Richard Causton's Piano  Quintet (2015), dedicated to the Nash. It's lively and inventive. Violins and viola tease cello and piano, provoking and taunting, whiling off in all directions.  Gradually the piano (Tim Horton)  restores harmony with a gracious cantilena.  Peter Maxwell Davies's String Quintet (2014) also received its world premiere. Four movements, each with a different mood and form, the Chacony being the most vivid. Before that, Elliott Carter's Poems of Louis Zukofsky (2008), with Claire Booth and Richard Hosford.  Carter expresses the shape of the poems as they are laid out in print. There are silences in poems which create an impact by the way they look on the page denser scoring where needed, the vocal line calling out into aural space.  Zukofsky's copyright holder issues stern warnings against quotation and use.  A very different attitude to the immensely rewarding creative inter-relationship between different art forms which made this concert so rewarding. 

If I haven't written much about the performances, that's because the Nash Ensemble are always good, and reliable.  The players on this occasion were Tim Horton (piano), Philippa Davies (flute), Richard Hosford (clarinet), David Adams (violin), Michael Gurevich (violin), Lawrence Power (viola), James Boyd (violin), Björg Lewis (cello), Adrian Brendel (cello), Lucy Wakefield (harp) and Claire Booth (soprano), and Lionel Friend (conductor).  This article also appears in Opera Today.

This concert was recorded for broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 13th June 2015

Birtwistle Carter Wigmore Hall

Probably the greatest living British composer, Sir Harrison Birtwistle, turns 80 in July. He'll be the subject of a series at the Barbican and no doubt feted at the BBC Proms. At the Wigmore Hall, the BBC Singers joined the Nash Emsemble for the latest of their series on British and American composers.  Colin Clarke writes in Opera Today :

"So it was that Birtwistle bookended the evening. The first piece was his Fantasia upon all the notes (2012), commissioned by the present ensemble and premiered at the Wigmore Hall in March 2012. Scored for flute, clarinet, harp (the sound of the harp, although not omnipresent, was a Theseus-thread through the evening) and string quartet, the score breathed out a lyric expansiveness, its long lines fully honoured here and leading to a frenetic climax before the piece effectively disintegrated. The basis for the composition (“all the notes”) is the shifting scales of the harp, dependent on the pedals used. In this way, the harp, by no means soloistic, subtly guides the harmonic language of the piece. ........"

"Elliott Carter's Mosaic of 2004 (for flute, oboe, clarinet, harp, string trio and double-bass) began the second half. The harp part is virtuosic but in the pre-concert talk Birtwistle had contrasted Carter's treatment of the instrument to his own: Carter does not let the instrument resonate (and therefore, by implication, be true to its own nature). The complex pedal work is impressive indeed as a performance act and one does have to wonder if this aspect is part of the piece's basis, just as the viola is asked to be contra-itself and be very forceful; very un-viola-like perhaps. It is an interesting piece, certainly, but it was overshadowed to no small extent by the piece that most people had surely come to hear, Birtwistle's recent The Moth Requiem (2012)."

Read the full review HERE. 

And HERE's what I wrote about Birtwistle's Moth Requiem last year.

Nash Ensemble Wigmore Hall, Warlock Britten Bax RVW

Now this is the kind of music writing I love to read! Claire Seymour, the Britten specialist, on the recent Nash Ensemble concert at the Wigmore Hal.  Read the full review here in Opera Today. 

"..............The desolate tones of Peter Warlock’s darkly prophetic The Curlew, for tenor, flute, cor anglais and string quartet, dominated the first half of the concert. Setting four poems by W.B. Yeats, Warlock evokes an almost unalleviated mood of despair; much of the vitality of the music derives from the composer’s uncannily apposite setting of the text, and tenor Mark Padmore’s eloquent, unmannered delivery of the rhythmically elaborate text did much to communicate the vividness and immediacy of the work. The opening instrumental mood-painting was moving and atmospheric: the plangent cor anglais (Gareth Hulse) announcing the eponymous bird’s plaintive lament, answered by the gentle repetitive murmuring of the flute’s peewit (Philippa Davies). The players adroitly established the bleak vista before the first, delayed entry of the voice, “O curlew, cry no more in the air”. Throughout the instrumental fabric was clearly articulated, both solos and ensemble presenting thematic wisps with delicacy and dolefulness - a perfect illustrative backdrop for the melancholic texts. The string players wove an intricate web of tremolo and sul ponticello traceries, complementing the woodwind’s mournful diminuendos and echoes. "

"Padmore shaped the vocal lines intelligently, although perhaps he did not fully reveal the emotional disturbance at the heart of the work, for the text and score demand that we be truly discomforted and perturbed. But there was affecting contrast and drama. With the opening of final stanza of ‘The Withering of the Boughs’, the tenor evoked tentative intimations of hope and new life, warmed by a string rocking motif, which was then immediately and unequivocally destroyed by the voice’s exposed quasi parlando repetition: “The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.” The composer instructs the singer to use a “low tone - almost a whisper” and Padmore executed this challenging line with consummate control.................."

Nash Ensemble Wigmore Hall Warlock The Curlew

The Nash Ensemble are a treasure, one of the finest chamber ensembles in this country. Their flexibility allows them to explore repertoire in many forms. With their unusually sensitive, intelligent choice of programmes, they revitalize the way we hear things.  Perhaps the Irish connections in this Wigmore Hall recital inspired the strange mysticism  that made this programme so very special.

Sir Arnold Bax identified passionately with a magical vision of Ireland. The opening chords of the oboe in Bax's Oboe Quintet (1922)  suggest a more primeval version of the Shepherd's flute in Tristan und Isolde. Is Bax referring to the irisch Kind, and to Isolde's tragic past? Gareth Hulse played with assertive, though melancholy grace. This is an inherently dramatic piece,the oboe operating as a voice, calling out into the distance, answering itself with sensual reverie, the high passages tearing at one's emotions.  The plaintive central movement, the lento progressivo, might suggest half-remembered folk music, but it's too sophisticated to be a mere quote.The Nash Ensemble, who make this piece something of a speciality, created the jig finale with wild, jaz- like energy. Bax knew Ireland too well to over-sentimentalize, particularly in the wake of the Easter Rising.  His archaic Irish dream lives in the period in which it was written.

In contrast, Elgar's early encores for violin, Salut d'amour (1889), Chanson de matin and Chanson de nuit sounded genteel though played with poise (Marianne Thorsen) . If Bax suggests open seas and open skies,  Elgar here suggests Victorian propriety. We appreciate both when heard together. Both composers set the context from which Peter Warlock's The Curlew was to arise.

Warlock's The Curlew deserves to be recognised as one of the masterpieces of British music., and indeed of modern European music as a whole. It's shockingly prophetic. Warlock started writing it in 1921, when Benjamin Britten was 8 years old, still at home with his mother, a detail which is poignantly relevant to Britten's situation. Although I don't know if Warlock's score is in Britten's library, it would seem that he almost certainly knew the piece, as it's startling how much it presages Britten's later work. The Curlew contains the long, keening lines, the tonal ambiguity, the hovering between old forms and new, and above all the sense of uncompromising fatality we hear so often in Britten. The utter desolation in Britten's Curlew River might have its roots in The Curlew. Even Peter Grimes might be distant kin  to the doomed soul in Warlock.

The Curlew begins with plaintive cor anglais  reminiscent of the oboe in Bax's Oboe Quintet. Gareth Hulse was kept busy. The mood deepens with viola and cello (Lawrence Poweer, Paul Watkins), evoking the idea of endless sky and sullen earth, Warlock responds perceptively to W B Yeats by establishing the oppressive atmosphere long before the entry of the voice (Mark Padmore). "Oh, Curlew, Cry no more," Padmore sings "....there is enough evil in the crying of the wind". The Curlew isn't song in the conventional sense but a tone poem with voice. Notice too the drooping diminuendoes, dragging down the creature of flight, and the back and forth chords the cello defines.  These are significant for they suggest a bleak panorama.

Yet the landscape here is nternal, not external. Three times Warlock repeats Yeats's line "No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind: the boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams". In the third strophe of the third song, Warlock writes exotic lyricism: one can also hear the call of some distant bird. But it's an illusion. The phrase repeats for the last time in hollow monotone, declaimed in half whisper, rather than song. The voice is silenced while the instruments speak in hushed murmurs. Guided by the cor anglais, the voice returns once more for the final, minimally accompanied song before it breaks off into sudden silence.

Warlock's The Curlew is such a disorienting piece that it is not comfortable to listen to in the communal environment of a recital hall. Alone, in the darkness and in private, you can give yourself  wholly to the piece and experience its searing impact. The Nash Ensemble have had The Curlew in their repertoire for years and are  perhaps its finest interpreters.  Padmore sings clearly, but doesn't have the surreal, poisoned intensity that John Mark Ainsley and others bring. The Curlew is such a queer bird that I don't think its strangeness can be fully realized without a disturbing emotional edge to the singing.

After The Curlew, I'm usually too ravaged to listen to anything, but in the real world, concert-goers need something relaxing to send them home.  Since the Nash Emsemble can call on Craig Ogden, they can present Benjamin Britten's Songs from the Chinese op 58 (1957). for voice and guitar. Perhaps Britten chose guitar because it vaguely replicates Chinese plucked instruments like the pipa or zheng, but experienced performers are few and far between in the west. The guitar adds an oddly Spanish timbre which for me contradicts the "Chinese" nature of the poetry, even in the westernized translation by Arthur Waley.  Padmore was more in his element here. In The Old Lute, the voice part is written to suggest the sound of a lute, whose sound is "still cold and clear", Padmore stretching the o-o-o-o in the vowels so they perceptibly chill. Similarly, Britten writes a turbulent rolling rhythm into The Autumn Wind which Padmore sings with elan.

The concert ended with another Nash Ensemble speciality, Ralph Vaughan Williams String Quartet in C  minor (1898). This fell into such obscurity that it was not heard in public until the Nash performed it at the Wigmore Hall nearly 100 years later. It's pleasant if undemanding. I was reminded of the line in The Old Lute, "How did it come to be neglected so ? Because of the Ch'iang flute and the zither of Ch'in"


photo of full Nash Ensemble : Hanya Chlala ArenaPAL

Britten, RVW, Finzi - Nash Ensemble, Wigmore Hall

"Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness?"
(Thomas Traherne c. 1636-1674).

The Nash Ensemble's series at the Wigmore Hall, "Dreamer of Dreams" continued its survey of British music in the first half of the 20th century with an intriguing programme. Many underlying themes, and thoughtful juxtapositions.
 (photo of the Nash Emsemble credit  Hanya Chlala/Arenapal)

 Britten's Simple Symphony op 4 for strings (1933-34) shows the composer in exuberant high spirits. The "Boisterous Bourrée" romped cheerfully. The "stomping" melody mimics heavy feet dancing, but needs to sound humorous. In the "Playful Pizzicato", the Nash Ensemble strings plucked crazily but in complete technical control. Britten is having fun, sending up "serious" music while being perfectly serious. In the early 1930's Walt Disney was making Silly Symphonies, an extremely inventive series of cartoons. While nursery characters frolicked, the audience was listening to orchestral music in the classical tradition. Britten enjoyed movies. Quite possibly, he saw Disney's work. A Silly Symphony based on a Simple Symphony would have been delightful. The themes in this symphony derive from the compositions Britten wrote as a child; he re-invents them (Read my article"Benjamin Britten Boy Wonder" HERE). "Simple" is a cheekly misnomer. While this short, sharp symphony bubbles with child-like glee, there's nothing childish in the technique. This is Britten, bursting into the public sphere, inspired by the wonder of creative growth.

The recital would end with Gerald Finzi's Dies Natalis which describes the miracle of creation through the eyes of a new born.  Between these two pillars, the Nash Ensemble placed early works by Frank Bridge and Ralph Vaughan Williams, extending the theme of youth and artistic birth.  

Bridge was later to become a formative influence on Britten, who opened horizons for Britten beyond the confines of British music at the time. Bridge's Three Songs for voice, viola and piano (1906) aren't specially innovative, and rely heavily on good performance. Roderick Williams animates the songs with committment. He's beautiful to listen to but the texts and text settings aren't up to his standards. "Blow...ye..winds" doesn't flow even if the poet is Matthew Arnold. "Where is that our soul doth go?" is a translation of a poem by Heine, so stodgy that it would defy most composers. Fortunately, Bridge's ear for viola was much more acute. The viola part dominates, voice and piano taking secondary place. Laurence Power's sensual playing made these pieces effective. Perhaps they are really songs for viola?

In 1908, Ralph Vaughan Williams went to France to study with Ravel. This was his artistic breakthrough.  His Five Mystical Songs (1906-11) are well known in the orchestral version, so hearing them as piano song shows how they bridge religious music and art song. Herbert wrote hyms for the godly: Vaughan Williams wrote hymns though he wasn't devout. Easter is fervent.  Roderick Williams emphasizes the key words and phrases, like "Thy Lord is Risen", but the sensuous beauty of his voice tempered their ferocity. The text suggest militant Christianity : Williams's warmth imbues it with humanity. The middle verse "Awake my lute" shines with characteristic RVW cadences, well defined by Ian Brown the pianist.  Roderick Williams's voice is naturally beautiful and colours the words with sensitivity.  In I got me flowers, the imagery is delicate, but the subdued chromatic middle section culminates in a forceful finale. "There is but one, and that one forever" sang Williams forcefully, supported by Brown's playing which resonated like a church organ.

 Antiphon is known to Anglicans as the hymn My Lord is King!. "Let all the world in ev'ry corner sings" erupts with a flurry of bell sounds, as if bells were ringing all over the world. Ralph Vaughan Williams admirers connect immediately with the pealing bells of In Summertime on Bredon (from On Wenlock Edge)  Text is foursquare. "The Church with palms must shout". But Vaughan Williams makes it clear that, for him, this is not anthem but art song.

William Alwyn's Pastoral fantasia for solo viola and strings  (1939) may have been included as a vehicle for Laurence Power. His playing made the piece worthwhile and enjoyable even though the work itself isn't memorable. Alwyn's pastoralism is pretty, but we know from Vaughan Williams that landscape painting in music is much more than surface charm. It was good to hear Alwyn in the company of Britten, Finzi and Vaugham Williams so we appreciate their originality all the more.

Gerald Finzi's masterpiece Dies Natalis op 8 (1939) was premiered at the Wigmore Hall in January 1940, by Elsie Suddaby. The Finzis and their sons used precious petrol rations to drive up to London for the occasion. For many in this 2012 Wigmore Hall audience, with many Finzi specialists, it was the much anticipated highlight of the evening. Unfortunately, Susan Gritton was indisposed, which is a pity as she's very good. She didn't seem well the previous week at the Mendelssohn concert (reviewed here) but  her replacement was left so late that the announcement had to be made on stage. Ailish Tynan was aparently cooking lamb for dinner when she was called to sing. Dies Natalis is difficult to sing but several sopranos and tenors have it in their repertoire. Since Tynan's best work has been in oratorio, her performance was interesting because it showed, like RVW's Five Mystical Songs, that oratorio and art song are fundamentally different genres.

Dies Natalis begins with an Intrada where themes to come emerge briefly. It suggests, to me, the swirling gases of the cosmos, before the Universe was formed. Dies Natalis deals with no less than the miracle of Life and Creation, so this interpretation is valid, since it suggests primordial growth and vast cosmic forces. I was a little surprised that the themes weren't as clearly defined as they could be, but that hardly matters, since the concept is so overwhelming. This sense of infinite space and time is important because the poet, Thomas Traherne, though Christian, was a mystic. Transcendentalism "transcends" traditional dogma.  "Will you see the infancy of this sublime and celestial greatness?" the poet asks. Traherne's Rhapsody is prose, but with strange syntax, which Finzi respects by setting it with unsual rhythms  "I was a stranger, which at my entrance into the world was saluted and surrounded with innumerable joys: my knowledge was Divine!", the word "divine" jumping forth from the score, as if illuminated by unearthly glow.

Although there are references to Adam and to God, Traherne'surreal imagery bears little resemblence to conventional religious text. "The corn was orient and immortal wheat, which never shall be reap'd nor was ever sown. I thought it had stood from everlasting to everlasting". Finzi's dynamic extremes emphasize the psychic extreme of the poet's imagination. They aren't there to display vocal gymnastics. Tynan's notes were pitched to extremes, at the expense of diction.  We should be hearing meaning, not voice as such, but meaning in Dies Natalis is not easy to grasp. Calm stillness underpins the ecstasy, for the cycle repeatedly refers to sublimation over ego and the sense of self. "I saw all in the peace of Eden. Everything was at rest, immortal and divine".

From Rhapsody to Rapture. This cycle often works best when sung by a tenor, emphasizing the strange, unconventional spirituality. "Sweet Infancy!" does not refer to babies, but to the idea of birth.. Perhaps for Finzi with his beliefs in organic farming and living in harmony with nature,  it's a statement of faith in something more primeval, the very force of life itself.  Finzi was way ahead of his time.

"When silent I, so many thousand, thousand Years beneath the Dust did in a Chaos lie, How could I Smiles, or Tears, or Lips or Hands or Eyes perceive " (Traherne's upper case).  Most definitely this isn't a human baby, nor even baby Jesus. Long before science developed theories about the Big Bang and primordial soup Traherne intuited the idea of the birth of the cosmos. Dies Natalis explores new territory, completely alien to the certainities of the established Church. Indeed, the very idea of faith is challenged. Fundamental to this cycle is the sense of wonder, of seeing the world anew through absolutely pure, unbiased eyes. Even Jesus had an agenda when he became Man. Finzi creates a  Being without any consciouness other than the sheer miracle of existence.  "A Stranger here, strange things doth meet, strange Glory see......Strange all and new to me, but that they MINE should be ...who Nothing was, That strangest is, of all, yet brought to pass". 

Recording recommendations - Wilfrid Brown, schoolteacher to Finzi's sons, (1955) and Ian Bostridge ( 1997)

Huw Watkins NMC In my craft or sullen art

Huw Watkins's opera In a Locked Room starts at the Linbury at the Royal Opera House this week. (Read about the Edinbugh premiere here). Huw Watkins is a famous pianist, but as composer he's best known to those who've heard live performances and read his scores. He's a significant composer, so this new recording, on NMC, will establish his reputation in wider circles.

Watkins's Sonata for Cello and Eight Instruments dates from 1999, and was previously only available on CD in piano/cello transcription.  In this version (recorded 10/2010) Paul Watkins's cello is supplemented by the Nash Ensemble, conducted by Ian Brown. The woodwind parts are alluring, mediating between cello and piano.  Watkins's gift for clarity comes over well in Partita for solo violin (2006). Despite the allusion to Bach, it's not baroque. As Bayan Northcott says in his notes "no double dotted rhythms, no courante, sarabande or gavotte". Alina Ibragimova, the dedicatee, negotiates its tricky turns gracefully, so the wayward molto allegro sounds vivid, even humorous.

Four Spencer Pieces (2001) for solo piano, played by the composer himself . Each of these miniature tone poems was inspired by a specific painting, like "Shipbuilding on the Clyde" and "The Resurrection of Soldiers". Stanley Spencer's paintings show ordinary events but lit by preternatural light, every detail crystal clear. The "pictures" are framed by a Prelude and a ravishingly beautiful Postlude in which cascading cadences suggest light, clarity, contemplation. Watkins isn't "illustrating" the pictures so much as expressing the earthy surrealism of Spencer's work, so the rapture of the Postlude is extraordinarly perceptive. This exqusite miniature is the highlight ofthe whole recording.

Like so many British composers before him, Watkins turns to W H Auden. Three Auden Songs (2009) are settings of Brussels in Winter, At last the secret is out, and Eyes look into the well. Thorny text lines twist. The mood is menace. "Still waters run deep, my dear, there's never smoke without fire"...."There is always a wicked secret, a private reason for this". An understated refrain but naggingly persistent.

Dylan Thomas's craft was poetry, but Watkins's setting of In my Craft or Sullen Art (2007) suggests that poetry, like alchemy, has the power to transmute base material into magic, "exercised in the still night when only the moon rages". A strange unworldly cello entices us in, and the first voice setting is relatively straightforward. A second, longer section for the Elias Quartet, singing together with their strings. Perhaps this is an interlude, but it feels central to the piece, sparking off a completely different setting of the same poem. This time the mood is agitated, insistent. The words "In my Craft or sullen art" are projected like a cry. Mark Padmore adapts his usual smooth urbanity so it captures the surreal nature of the piece. At times he sounds uncannily like Ian Bostridge. This isn't a work for voice and string quartet so much as a work for string quartet with additional voice. In the final strophe of the second setting of text, the strings subsume the human voice, and take over where it leaves off.  That's Huw Watkins's "Craft": singular and very original.

I've been reading the libretto to In the Locked Room and will be writing more on Huw Watkins's new opera soon.

The Nash Ensemble, Edinburgh

The Wigmore Hall's resident Nash Ensemble graced Edinburgh for the closing concert of the New Town Concert Society's 2011/12 series. Their programme opened with James Macmillan's 2007 Quintet for Horn and String Quartet, continuing the horn-featuring programming the Edinburgh concert scene has seen this season. This work shares the sound world of Macmillan's widely acclaimed large scale work, Tuireadh, a lament for the Piper Alpha disaster, but is for smaller forces. It also showcases the hunting and military aspects of the horn's character as an instrument, contrasting these with passages for various of the players suggesting a keening lament, further referencing Tuireadh. Of these latter sections, an extended solo for the viola – here ably performed by Lawrence Power, who featured in last week's performance here with the Scottish Ensemble – stand out and is one of the most delightful passages in the entire work.

Although the Macmillan piece was both interesting and enjoyable, for me the highlight of the evening was a sensitive and evocative performance of Brahms's lovely Trio for Horn, Violin and Piano (Op40), another work again featuring the French horn. This also shares with Macmillan's quintet the feeling of an orchestral scale of work, notwithstanding the use of compact forces, especially in this trio, it has much of the expansiveness of the Second and Third Symphonies. The works also share the element of mourning, this Trio being written in memory of Brahms's mother, who had died only four months before it was completed. Yet another parallel between the works is the referencing of the use of the horn in hunting, Brahms portraying a forest scene in the scherzo and featuring the hunting horn in it, giving a foreshadowing of Mahler.

The use of the horn gives a typically Brahmsian tone quality, as with the use of the clarinet in the chamber trio he wrote for that instrument, although there is also a clear homage to Bach. This work's emotional heart is in its yearning Adagio third movement, again a feature which draws parallels to the great Adagios of Mahler, whose debt to Brahms was vividly illustrated in this work, such as that of his Fifth Symphony.

This was followed by a good account of the Dvorak Quintet for Piano and Strings (Op81), allowing horn player Richard Watkins a well earned rest. This was a good performance of a work which although widely performed I consider over-rated; to my mind it would have been preferable to have continued with more Brahms and played his own superior Quintet, or to have selected the other major and pleasing romantic 19th century Quintet, that of Schumann.

by Juliet Williams
photo: Hanya Chlala/ Arenapal

Harrison Birtwistle 75th birthday Wigmore Hall

"If anything", said Philip Langridge in 2008,"Birtwistle’s music has become more impressive with time".  "He writes mathematically, in the way Bach writes mathematically, but with great emotion. To sing Birtwistle," he adds, "you have to understand the ‘maths’ first, to get the figures right, to get the intervals right".

To get the intervals right, to respect the silences....... an apt description of Birtwistle's mature work. The Nash Ensemble celebrated Sir Harrison Birtwistle's 75th birthday at the Wigmore Hall, London with a well balanced programme of his music with two premieres, an Oboe Quartet and the UK premiere of Elliott Carter's Poems of Louis Zukofsky (2009)

Framing the two new works with two older pieces was a good idea, because that linked past to present.  Five Distances for Wind Quintet shows Birtwistle (1992) in a cheerful mood. A horn in a wind quartet? Formality is scuttled, the horn chasing and distorting the more conventional wind ensemble. "A fox among chickens", says Stephen Pruslin.  The Oboe Quartet is more open ended. It's not complete, which is rather fun, because you have to use your imagination. The two outer movements are symmetrical and the unfinished middle movement, barely sketched here, may be freer and more improvisational.  Long, searching chords on flute and oboe mix with short, sharp interjections: bass plucked like a giant lute, violin strummed like a guitar.  Because it's incomplete, there's a sense of "tearing" that's appealling. It reminds me of Wolfgang Rihm's "fragmentization"


Which is why it goes well with The Woman and the Hare (1999).  Again, there's a dichotomy between form and freedom. The reciter (Julia Watson) intones  text in notated speech, while the soprano (Claire Booth) sings long arching lines : words barely connected by grammar, crystallized as images. "Moonrise ....landscape awash with dead white light". David Harsent's text is understated, its meaning elusive, coming from the odd pulse and silences as much as from the words. 


Two voices, then two flutes. In Duets for Storab (1983) Philippa Davies and Ian Clarke interact like aspects of nature, birds perhaps, or even eddies of wind. (which is what flutes do) This feels like "earth music", as if it composed itself without human intervention, yet it's beautifully shaped.

Elliott Carter's Poems of Louis Zukofsky takes the idea of silence even further. The poems come with a stern warning that they must not even be quoted without express permission.  How then to comment on Carter's setting? The poems are minimal. Single, disconnected words spread loosely across the page, which Carter sets extremely sensitively. His music incorporates silence, that speaks just as the blank spaces in the poems are part of their essence.  Maybe the Zufofsky estate will try to make money out of silence. Sorry, but it's anti-art, to know the price of everything and the value of nothing. 


To conclude, Birtwistle's Tragoedia (1965). Tragedy is misleading in a way because there's too much wit in the piece to be gloomy. In the centre sits the harpist (Hugh Webb) acting as gate keeper between the 5 winds and 4 strings. Sometimes the flautist doubles as percussion, beating a small wooden block, marking the passage of time, perhaps. The harp's also a stringed instrument, so there are patterns within patterns in this meticulously choreographed piece. More symmetry. Just as the concert began with two pieces that pit formality with freedom, Tragoedia uses the idea of a processional march but enlivens it.  The piece  pivots on the harp, and ends with the same 4 note sequence which framed the various segments.

Please see many other pieces on Birtwistle on this site